okay but there is something disquieting about this urge to cast fan writers as altruists. they give us all this for free!! well, no.
theyāre sharing
itās a key difference in perception. fic isnāt given. itās shared. itās part of a fandom communityā in which readers are also an integral part.
itās probably inevitable mission creep from the increasingly transactional nature of the internet and fandom-as-consumerism, which was always gonna happen after corps worked out how much bank there is to make from those weirdo fan people
but like. fandom is sharing. i think weāve lost that somewhere.
